Neat as he was as a wicketkeeper and as a batsman (he was selected for his Test debut on the strength of his batting), Rashid Latif earned more fame for his controversial acts than for his cricketing deeds. He announced his retirement in the middle of Pakistan's 1994-95 tour of Zimbabwe, following some fishy goings-on in South Africa under Salim Malik's captaincy, then returned as "Mr Clean" to captain the side after he had given plenty of evidence to Judge Qayyum's inquiry. All went well at first in South Africa in 1997-98 until he found, like Rameez Raja and Aamir Sohail, that certain senior players did not want things to change. He made a surprise return to the colours for the 2001 tour of England, and got a second shot at the captaincy when Waqar Younis was sacked after Pakistan's miserable performance at the 2003 World Cup. There was more controversy to follow, though. He kept up his crusade to clean up the game, writing an open letter to the ICC, warning of the dangers of "fancy fixing". Then, he was suspended for five matches for wrongly claiming a catch during the series against Bangladesh. These incidents led to the souring of relations between him and the Pakistan board, and ultimately resulted in his stepping down from captaincy at the end of that series.

Latif's penchant for controversy continued after his retirement too. He took up a job as batting coach of Afghanistan, but quit after citing interference with his coaching role. He was then appointed wicketkeeping coach by the Pakistan Cricket Board, but lasted less than a month in that role after comments he made on spot-fixing weren't viewed favourably by the board. That made him return to Afghanistan, this time as head coach.